a fortiori argument. That's "reasoning from the stronger case," as, for instance, in the following: "Your ancestors risked their lives for the sake of their city. Will you now, in a venture far less risky, fail to do likewise?" That is, if your ancestors did right to do as they did, that same logic compels you all the more to follow their example.
agōn, agonism. agōn is Greek for "contest," any kind of contest: an athletic event, a courtroom trial, a debate, anything involving competition. "Agonism" is a word scholars use for the culture of competition in the Greek-speaking Roman East during the first three or so centuries of the Common Era. It is, in large measure, what this course is about.
ambitio. Latin for "ambition"; more under philotimia.
amulet. See the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
apotropaic. See the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
auxēsis. Rhetorical "amplification," which can mean many things, but for our purposes, mostly will refer to elaborating both the thought and the expression of a pre-existing sentiment, narrative, etc.: "This tastes good" > "My taste buds positively sing with delight when they meet with such fine food!" (metaphor, personification, alliteration). More here, especially under the section marked "Amplification as copia (a pedagogical process)" (Burton Silva Rhetoricae)
baskania. "Envy," also the evil eye. The gaze of those who envied was believed to be harmful in and of itself, both to people and to things. The baskanos, one possessed of the evil eye (plural baskanoi), thus was both a threat and a social pariah. See also phthonos.
bucolic. For our purposes, "bucolic" (from boukolos, "cow herder") describes literature that concerns itself with life in the coutryside: herders, farmers, etc. As such, it is meant to evoke a world that contrasts with the sophistication of city life. But of course, that is (nearly?) always a game in Greco--Roman literature; bucolic is often slyly sophisticated, allusive, and learned. Case in point, the novel Daphnis and Chloe; more on bucolic (also called "pastoral") on the D&C Study Guide.
cena. See symposium.
chreia (Greek khreia, "useful thing"). A chreia is an anecdote, perhaps as brief as one, somewhat complex sentence, and usually conveying something smart, clever, witty, or wise that a famous figure has said or done. The classic form seems to narrate an astute retort to a banal or naive question, for instance, "When Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, was asked by someone where he kept his treasures, 'Here,' he said, pointing to his friends" (Theon, page 18 Kennedy). Theon illustrates with many other types, though. The anecdote is a "chreia," a useful thing, because of the wisdom, wit, etc. it illustrates.
classic, classical, classicize, classicism. English "classic" comes from the Latin adjective classicus in the sense of "having to do with the elite, with those of the first rank" (from classis, "class" or "upper class). In English, "classic" and derivatives are often used to refer to those products of the human imgination that have stood the test of time. When I was small, classics were books like Robinson Crusoe and Great Expectations. "Classic rock" is rock music dating mostly from the 1960s and 70s and exemplifying the hard-rock styles of bands like the Rolling Stones; for baby-boomers, it is an ideal never to be surpassed.
But that idealizing view of the classic needs to be unpacked. Our first evidence for use of classicus in a sense approaching that of English "classic" is in the Latin author Aulus Gellius. Writing in the second century CE, Gellius recalls a lesson taught by the Roman rhetorician Fronto. Thus Fronto recommended that students of Latin rhetoric have recourse to older, established Latin authors when looking for the right word to use in a particular context. For your models, look to the classicus adsiduusque scriptor, the "high-class, respectable sort of author," one from the cohors antiquior, the "older generation" (Attic Nights 19.8.15). Do that, he seems to say, if you want your work to be taken seriously. Note, though, how classicus attaches class associations to notions of stylistic quality: classicus comes from Latin classis in the specific sense of "upper class." It is, then, not unreasonable to suppose that, for Fronto, use of less "classy" models could lead to "vulgar" — lower-class, bad — results. Used in that way, classicus/"classic" cannot hope to be value free; indeed, it is itself a rhetorically loaded term seeking less to describe than to persuade. It is a label privileging "this" as inherently superior to "that."
Consider the use of "classic(al)" as a label. So, for instance, "classical" style is often understood as followed by a "decadent" style, as in the case of older accounts of ancient Greek art history. Its "classical" phase was ca. 500-300 BCE, when ideal form — "classic" beauty — was achieved. Following it was the "Hellenistic" period, when art departed from classical ideals to follow more "decadent" tendencies.
Something similar applies to the labeling of early-modern Western art. Thus the European renaissance, ca. 1400-ca. 1600, has at times been presented as a return to classical Greek and Roman ideals. By contrast, the baroque, a style featuring drama and ornament, shows the decay that set in after renaissance ideals had run their course. Of course, serious scholars no longer think like that. But labels like "classical" and "baroque" remain in use. ("Baroque," from a Portuguese word for a rough, irregular pearl, was originally a term of disparagement.)
Returning to ancient times, this notion of the "classical" held great importance not just for Latin rhetoricians and writers. Greeks of the Imperial period also had their "classics," what they termed their enkrithentes, authors "judged among the finest," and prattomenoi, "authors who are studied." Indeed, Greek authors of the second sophistic "classicized": they sought to imitate the language and style of earlier models, for the most part, what we today term classical Athenian writers, 400s to 300s BCE. We call that practice "classicism."
Modern notions of the "classical past" go, however, well beyond looking to the past for approved stylistic models. That looking-back can very easily morph into a kind of escapism, a nostalgia not unlike that manifested by Romantic poets (Keats of the "Grecian Urn," Poe of "To Helen"). But we also see something similar in our Roman-Imperial sophists, whose writings often show a keen interest in a quasi-made-up "Greece that was," what Donald Russell has aptly termed "Sophistopolis." Much of the above plays into definitions of the otherwise confusingly-named academic discipline that I and colleagues of mine pursue: classics. Yes, we are deeply invested in the study of the Greco-Roman past, but no, we do not wish to freight study of that past with elitist associations, nor do we wish to recommend immersing oneself in it just to escape a problematic and possibly frightening present.
Commensality. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a "commensal state; the habit of eating at the same table." We can define it as practices, mindsets, and values relating to dining and drinking as social activities, especially within a particular culture. See also sociality.
convivium. See symposium.
cultural capital. Cultural capital is the "bankable" prestige ("bankable" because it's valuable for getting ahead socially and otherwise) that comes from, among other things, an advanced education and what might be termed elite savoir faire, in short, from paideia. For this course, it's maybe not so important to know how the concept fits into Pierre Bourdieu's (1930-2002) trio of concepts: field, habitus, cultural capital. It will, though, help to keep in mind that this idea of social capital is similar to Marx's of financial capital. Notes the website Social Theory Rewired, "For Bourdieu and Marx both, the more capital one has, the more powerful a position one occupies in social life. However, Bourdieu extended Marx's idea of capital beyond the economic and into the more symbolic realm of culture."
declamation (Latin declamatio). See meletē.
deipnon. See symposium.
dialexis (plural dialexeis). Dialexis can refer simply to a sophistic prelude (see prolalia). Or it can refer to a prose dialogue (similar to Plato's dialogues), a popular genre of literary production during the second sophistic.
dicanic. See "rhetoric."
diēgēsis. The "narrative" or "narration" is the part of a speech that tells a story. Coutroom speeches typically revolved around someone's version of events, and thus would be expected to contain diēgēseis (plural). Political speeches typically did not tell a story; fables obviously did. If the rhetorical situation demanded a story, the orator needed to be able to tell one, and to tell it well.
ekphrasis. Also spelled "ecphrasis," it is literary/rhetorical description. In our sources, ekphrasis can describe just about anything: people, places, things, events, but especially, works of art. We have ekphrases (plural) from the earliest surviving Greek literature; Homer's "Shield of Achilles" description (Iliad book 18) is the most famous of all. Like other examples of ekphrasis, Homer's "Shield" doesn't just describe a thing. It invests that thing (the shield that the god Hephaestus makes for Achilles) with a kind of life, for the scenes pictured on the shield convey a vivid sense of the world peopled by Homer's actors. This quality of vivid representation, of language used to bring a thing or scene to life before the mind's eye (enargeia, "clarity" or "vividness"), was a key requirement of literary-rhetorical ekphrasis in literature associated with the Greek second sophistic (1st-3rd cent. CE). Ekphrasis was a much-used form of rhetorical exercise (progumnasma) and figures prominently in works we are reading by Lucian and Longus. In these last (Lucian Portraits, Hall; Longus Daphnis and Chloe), ekphrasis offers a way to explore themes prominent in Imperial Greek literature, including that of the author/rhetor's fame, as well as that of the quasi-agōn between the source of inspiration (the thing described, but also an author's classical models) and the literary-rhetorical artifact itself.
enargeia. among the meanings of enargeia is the one that will concern us, namely, rhetorical "vividness," that is, vivid description, vivid narrative. From an article of mine:
"Plutarch [states] that the aim of both painting and historical narration is enargeia, 'vivid description' (De glor. Ath. 346f–47c). According to Quintilian, this quality, which he calls evidentia, lends persuasive power to narrative. For it makes audiences feel as if they are witnesses to truth. According to the author of the De elocutione, this vividness comes from attention to detail." (TAPA 151.2 2021 p. 344)
In other words, include details to make us feel we're really there.
encomium (plural encomia; also enkōmion, enkōmia). Praise speech. It can praise a person, place, anything. English synonyms include "eulogy" or "panegyric." More here (Burton Silvae Rhetoricae).
enthymeme (enthumēma, "thought," "reasoning"). An enthymeme, as conceived by Aristotle, is a rhetorical syllogism. In general, it's reasoning where the audience has to connect the dots. Enthymemes are plausible rather than true: they appeal to ways that an audience tends or likes to understand the world. In the case of a claim like "So-and-so did this because he's a man," the audience has to supply the unstated premise, "And this is what men do." Or in "So-and-so is a mom because she's fussing over what must be her baby," we have proof by sign (the woman's actions); what the audience brings to it is a shared understanding of what moms do. But note how cultural constructions of man- and mom-hood figure into the equation. Further, in giving audiences the chance to connect the dots, enthymemes become all the more compelling. But they often rely, as do the previous examples, on stereotypes. See also epicheireme.
ephebe. An adolescent or young man receiving intellectual and athletic training in the gumnasia.
epichireme. From Greek epikheirēma, a "taking in hand"; you're "undertaking" to convey what it is that makes what you say convincing. Though epicheireme always has to do with the role of proof in rhetoric, ancient writers don't always seem to agree in their understanding of the term. We're going to go with Theon's take on it. Though I don't find a clear definition in Theon, I think what he means is a statement that convinces because securely founded on a premise or premises whose proof the rhetor provides. Example: If human beings have souls (and that they do is evident from the fact that they possess feelings, thought, and consciousness), and if Socrates is human (and we see that he is, for he is rational, has power of speech, etc. etc.), then Socrates has a soul. That isn't just one syllogism; it's a bunch of them stated or implied to form a complex argument. See also syllogism, enthymeme.
epideictic. See "rhetoric"; also, the "Encomium and Figured Rhetoric" Study Guide.
erōs. "Love," "desire," "lust," sexual or otherwise, often overpowering. It can be for anything — wealth, success, power, etc. — but sexual lust often seems the primary sense. Capitalized, Eros is the god of love/lust. He is conventionally shown as a winged child or baby with bow and arrows, though from earliest times he could be viewed as an irresistible, elemental force. Cupid (Cupidō) is the Roman version of Eros.
ēthopoiia. "Characterization," or, to quote Brill's New Pauly, "the representation of the character (êthos) of an orator or another person." That can involve the effort to convey a positive or negative view of a person's character, even of the speaker's own character, or it can involve speech meant to imitate or evoke (mimēsis) a person other than the speaker or writer, aka, impersonation, something fiction writers regularly do, but so did sophists. Ēthopoiia and prosōpopoiia can be very similar.
euergetism. A modern word coined from ancient Greek euergetēs, "benefactor." Related to that word is euergesia, "philanthropy." Euergetism was the practice of performing philanthropic works (i.e., commissioning and funding them). To quote the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Civic euergetism was a mixture of social display, patriotism, and political self-interest." It required much wealth, but it could confer great prestige, as those works — theaters, libraries, baths, etc. — would be seen and enjoyed by many. It should not be viewed as charity, as it was highly political in nature, and closely related to Roman practices of funding public works and games as a bid for political advancement. Compare/contrast liturgies, which, from about 100 CE on, seem more and more to have been treated as a kind of obligatory philanthropy.
eulogy. Though the word derives from Greek, English often uses it to translate encomium, which see.
(rhetorical) exigence. According to Bitzer, "In any rhetorical situation there will be at least one controlling exigence which functions as the organizing principle: it specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected" ("The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric 1968). Basically, rhetorical exigence (exigence is simply a word that means "need") is whom you need to talk to (the audience) and what you need to convince them of ("the change to be effected"). For the sophists, who are often dramatizing a speech situation, that becomes more complicated. Their imaginary speaker or speakers, whom they play as if in a drama, are addressing a quasi-imaginary audience — quasi-imaginary because, in a way, the sophist's actual audience is playing the imaginary one. The mindsets that need to be changed have both to do with the imaginary situation and with the sophist's own performance situation, that is, the impression the sophist seeks to leave on listeners or readers. The persuasive goals of imaginary speakers and of actual speaker are inevitably intertwined.
grammatikos. Or in Latin, grammaticus, a teacher of language arts (advanced lessons in literary Greek, study of classic literature, elementary rhetorical training) to upper-class, middle-school-age boys. His instruction would be followed by that of the rhētōr or sophist.
gumnasion. Also spelled gymnasion, in Latin, gymnasium. The word derives from gumnos, "nude/naked." It was where Greek men and boys exercised in the nude. Originally, it would have simply been an open field outside the city. In the Roman East, gumnasia could be exercise-bathing establishments on a grand scale, and inside the city. Greco-Roman gymnasia were still a locus of physical training, but also offered a place for intellectual training. In addition to bathing facuilities, such establishments might boast of a roofed, indoor track (a xustos) and an auditorium.
hupothesis eskhēmatismenē. See skhēma.
hypothesis. The theme or subject of a declamation (meletē) or progumnasma, typically, a very specific concern or situation, often posed as a question, which the sophist would then argue both sides of. E.g., "A philosopher advises a tyrant to renounce power. Should the philosopher be honored as a tyrant-killer?" (cf. Azoulay The Tyrant-Slayers of Ancient Athens 2017 page 155).
khrōma. Rhetorical "coloring" (Latin color). "Χρῶμα ("colour") is the slant or spin, as we say today, that an orator gives to his case to make it favourable to his side" (Hock, The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Commentaries on Aphthonius's Progymnasmata, page 229 n. 135). See further on "spin," Persuasion site.
liturgies (from leitourgia, "public works"). Here we're not talking about religious services, but about ad hoc financial responsibilities assigned to wealthy citizens. If a city has decreed that so-and-so must pay for such-and-such, that's a liturgy. To quote the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "[Liturgies] channelled the expenditure and competitiveness of rich individuals into public-spirited directions, and was perhaps felt to be less confiscatory than an equivalent level of taxation" (A. Jones, P. J. Rhodes). Under the classical Athenian democracy, they helped pay for warships and festivals; later, in the Roman East, they likewise financed festivals, but also gymnasium expenses (as in the van Nijf chapter) and other things. As they often involved considerable expense, rich folks saddled with a liturgy would often seek to get out of it. Cities, as a way to honor noteworthy citizens, sometimes freed them from such obligations — an immunity. Liturgies would seem in many ways the opposite of euergetism, socially-politically motivated philanthropy, but as van Nijf notes, an office like that of gymnasiarch ("gymnasium president") could well have been more of a liturgy (a city-imposed financial burden) than a magistracy (an office, or arkhē, to which willing candidates would have been elected or appointed, "Athletics and paideia," Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, page 208). By the third century CE, the difference between liturgy and civic office had broken down.
logos (plural, logoi). Quoting from the Persuasion site, "Account, story, speech, an individual speech; an argument. Also calculation, reason, rational thought, reasoned discourse, true story (versus myth), etc." In rhetoric, logos could refer to an appeal to reason, arguments that seek to persuade through logic, as opposed to emotional appeal. More here (Burton Silva Rhetoricae). Except that all appeals, even via logic, are appeals to emotion. Put differently, being logical is inevitably a rhetorical pose. For persuasion inevitably happens at an emotional level.
meletē (plural meletai). meletē is "care," "attention," "practice." As term for a rhetorical genre, it means "sophistic declamation," described by Brill's New Pauly as "one of the most prestigious cultural activities in the Greek world" during the period of the second sophistic, 1st-3rd cents. CE. This was rhetoric for its own sake. In a typical sophistic performance, the meletē, typically preceded by a warm-up speech called a prolalia, was the high point. In it, the declaimer would typically assume the persona of a public figure from from the period of democracy at Athens (508/7-323 BCE). Meletai often imitated political, or symbouleutic oratory. Or a sophist might assume the persona of a litigator in court; in that case, dicanic. The sophist would often start with a debate question (hypothesis) and then argue both sides of the matter, like playing chess with oneself. In so doing, the sophist showed off; to that extent, meletai were examples of epideictic. Meletai were, in short, a kind of historical play-acting. The really accomplished sophist would thrill audiences with his power to improvise such speeches. Sophists did, though, also publish written versions of their meletai. The sophist Aelius Aristides (117-after 181 CE) later in his career stopped declaiming in public but continued to write and to publish.
mimēsis. "Imitation," see zēlos.
mosaic. See the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
nikē (νίκη). Greek for "victory."
novel. The ancient Greek novel, or "prose romance" as it is often called, is a type of long-form fiction mostly focused on the love of a boy and girl who, after a series of adventures, manage finally to get married. There is no single term in ancient Greek for the genre, though we do find the word drama ("drama") so used (Brill's New Pauly). Surviving texts may date to around the time of Christ, and the genre remained popular in the Greek-speaking East into the Middle Ages. But it seems to have enjoyed a flowering concurrent with the second sophistic, 1st-3rd cents. CE. Novels from the period, including Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, show numerous points of contact with sophistic rhetoric and literature of the time; see the Daphnis and Chloe Study Guide for more.
paideia. "Education," "culture." paideia during the period of the second sophistic implied more than just going to school. It implied a wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of literature, philosophy, high culture generally. It was one of the aims of a sophist to project paideia in all that one said, wrote, did. As it was generally quite expensive and time-consuming to attain, it was also a mark of prestige. Lucian in his Vision conveys a good idea of it.
palaistra (palaestra, "palestra"). Greek for "wrestling place." In the Roman East, palaistrai would often form part of a gumnasion.
panegyric. Though the word derives from Greek, English translations from Greek often use it to mean encomium, which see. Panegyric can also describe speeches composed for special occasions, like religious festivals.
panēguris. Often spelled panegyris, it is a festival honoring a national god, or the specific instance of such a festival being held — a festival that draws a crowd "from far and wide" (that's what the word seeks to convey), for instance, the Olympics at Olympia, in honor of Zeus Olympius.
parasite. The English word comes from parasitos, meaning, literally, "one who eats with/beside." The Liddel-Scott-Jones Lexicon defines parasitos as "one who eats at the table of another, and repays [them] with flattery and buffoonery." Starting with Greek New Comedy (321 - ca. 100 BCE or later), the parasite was a stock literary figure treated often with scorn and ridicule, though Alciphron's parasites come in for a more sympathetic treatment. Gnatho, in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, is a parasite; see more on the "Sophia and the Art — and Science — of Networking" Study Guide.
pantonikēs (plural pantonikai). Here I quote directly from Mark Golden's excellent Sport in the Ancient World from A to Z, " 'victor in all contests', a term coined to describe Nero's unrivaled accomplishment of winning at all six festivals of the periodos in the same year." (I.e., in 66/67 CE, when the periodos consisted of just six festivals.)
parrhēsia. parrhēsia is "frank speech." Foucault defines it as "the zero degree of those rhetorical figures which intensify the emotions of the audience" (Fearless Speech, page 21). We might call it "talking turkey"; it is Bill O'Reilly's "no-spin zone." And yet the ancients considered it a figure of rhetoric — why? Isn't it a kind of rhetoric to spin your speech as . . . devoid of rhetoric?
periodonikēs. See periodos.
periodos. periodos is Greek for "way round." In golf they'd call it "the tour"; the Greek is usually translated as "circuit." It's the four most important ancient Greek athletic festivals: the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games. For our period (Roman Empire) they added additional games to this circuit: the Heraea (at Argos), the Actia (Nicopolis, western Greece), the Sebasta (at Naples), and the Capitolia (at Rome). To win all four of those original four, or at least four of the expanded number, earned one the title periodonikēs.
philotimia. Greek for "love of honor," "ambition." (In Latin ambitio.) philotimia was ordinarily perceived as a respectable trait for a (male) aristocrat, who was expected to be ambitious. But it was also regarded as subject to being overdone. To be too ambitious could be disruptive socially and politically. Ambition could also produce clashing rivalries, and therefore envy and resentment. See Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists, page 27, on the rivalry between Favorinus and Polemon, for the downside of ambition-fueled rivalry (the translation calls it "love of glory").
physiognomy. The English word comes from Greek phusiognōmonia, which the Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon defines as "the science or art of judging a [person] by [their] features." We can call that the art or science (the difference between art and science was debated in Greco-Roman antiquity) of reading the soul through the body's signs. For more, see the "Sophia and the Art — and Science — of Networking" Study Guide.
phthonos. "Envy," a prime concern of Greeks during our period, represented a shameful emotion (an antisocial emotion — you didn't want to be seen as envying someone / something) and posed a threat. How a threat? The malice of the envious could cause harm targeting those / what the envious envied. It could jinx people, their undertakings, their animals, plants, buildings, anything. For the gaze of the envious was itself deemed physically toxic (see baskania). But envy was believed as well to harm the envier. It literally ate away at her or him; Ariston calls it a purulent conjunctivitis of the soul (13.3 Wehrli) — nasty stuff. See also zēlos.
progumnasma, (plural progumnasmata; also progymnasma, progymnasmata). "Preliminary rhetorical exercise. (pro-"premilinary" + gumnasma-"exercise," as in "gymnasium.") These were speeches, in Greek, that students would write and deliver orally; they formed a key part of education in Greek-speaking lands within the Roman empire. (The equivalent in Latin-based educational systems will have been the praeexercitamen.) Surviving rhetorical handbooks, e.g., the Exercises of Aelius Theon, could be quite detailed on the different types of speeches and on the "how" of composing them. The composition and delivery of progumnasmata will be central to this course. See also meletē.
prooimion. This is the introductory section of any speech; the Latin is exordium. Prooimia (the Greek plural) were important in law-court speeches (dicanic), but were crucial to display-praise speeches (epideictic). The prooimion introduces the speaker and the subject to the audience. In political and, especially, in legal speeches, speakers typically use it to curry with the audience. In epideictic, the prooimion seeks to naivage the tricky waters of avoiding arousing the jealousy of one's audience regarding the achievements that one praises and avoiding arousing the resentment of one's audience toward oneself at having to listen to one praise. By emphasizing the challenge faced by the orator, the orator in effect primes the audience to be all the more receptive and to be all the more impressed with both the figure praised and with the orator praising. Put differently, prooimia help defuse all the envy and resentment that peidiecitc risks arousing. For the topics of encomiastic prooimia, see the opening paragraphs of the Menander Rhetor treatise 2 (Brightspace course site > Content > Links to Readings). Menander Rhetor recommends three (!) prooimia for imperial encomia; you need compose only one for yours.
prokatalēpsis, prolēpsis. The "anticipation" and refutation of an opponent's words or arguments. We can view that as a form of "spin" (khrōma): it helps shape how an audience receives/perceives another's words, even if those aren't that person's words.
prolalia. Literally, it means an introductory chat, but in rhetoric it refers to the warm-up speech that sophists gave before the performance of a meletē. It was usually a more informal sort of discourse than the meletē.
prolepsis. See prokatalepsis.
prosōpopoiia (prosopopoeia). "Personification," attributing human traits, especially speech, to animals / things not human. That can include abstractions, as in the case of the "Statuary" (i.e., the art of sculpture) and "Culture" (i.e., paideia), speakers in Lucian's Vision. Ancient rhetorical theory viewed it as, among other things, "the representation of fictive persons" (Brill's New Pauly). In that sense, it's little different from ēthopoiia, with which it could be confused.
rhētōr (plural rhētores). The word rhētōr simply means "speaker" in ancient Greek, but during the Imperial period, it often referred to a teacher of rhetoric. The term "sophist" (sophistēs) could be interchangeable with rhētōr, but tended to refer to something more grand. Philostratus, writing in the early third century CE, states that " 'sophist' was the term used by the ancients to designate not just those rhetors who were powerful and distinguished orators but also those philosophers who expressed themselves in a flowing style." (Lives of the Sophists 484.5-8 Orearius). If nothing else, that tells us that, at least for Philostratus, "sophist" could refer to any rhetor who had achieved distinction in the course of his career. In fourth-century Antioch on the Orontes (in present-day Turkey), Libanius, the official sophist or "rhetoric professor" for the city, employed a number of rhetors in his school. For sophists, more here.
rhetoric. (rhētorikē tekhnē, "skill appropriate to the rhētōr, "speaker"). Here follow a few, somewhat overlapping definitions of "rhetoric":
- The art of speaking and writing.
- The art of producing persuasive or effective discourse (logos).
- According to Aristotle, the study of the techniques of persuasion: not of implanting true knowledge in others, but of conveying reasonable, plausible, and convincing "takes" or opinions on things.
- Under the Roman Empire (late first cent. BCE to about the fifth or sixth cent. CE, depending on where in the empire we're talking about), rhetoric became the centerpiece of education, especially at the advanced level; under emperors like Vespasian (r. 69-79 CE) and Antoninus Pius (r. 138-161 CE), its teaching was institutionalized with the establishment of chairs of rhetoric and of special privileges for certain of its teachers, called "sophists." Though rhetoric had ceased to play a key role at the very highest levels of political deliberation (contrast rhetoric under the mature Athenian democracy, ca. 430-323 BCE, or under the Roman Republic, 509-27 BCE), in diplomacy, in local assemblies, in various judicial contexts, at ceremonial occasions, and at sophistic performances, skill in rhetoric, that is, in forceful, persuasive, and elegant self-expression, counted for much. It brought prestige and opened doors — it made things happen. Indeed, the conventions and lessons of rhetoric shaped literary expression of all sorts.
Additional comments on rhetorical genre, style, canons:
Genre (genos). From Aristotle on, three basic varieties, or "genres," of rhetoric were recognized:
- Dicanic, aka, judicial oratory, the rhetoric of the courtroom. Notes Aristotle, its audience judges past actions; its prime topics are justice and injustice ("Is so-and-so guilty?"). Traditionally, it was considered to be the least adorned genre. In teaching and practice, though, its use of language and logic could be a lot more than "just the facts."
- Symbouleutic, aka, political oratory, for deliberation of policy in council or assembly. Notes Aristotle, its audience judges future action; its prime topics are expedience and inexpedience, advantage and disadvantage ("Should we raise taxes?").
- Epideictic, aka, display oratory. Notes Aristotle, its audience members are "spectators" (as at a show) of the orator's skill; its prime topics are praise and blame of people or things ("Is so-and-so a great person?"). Traditionally, it was considered to be the most given to adornment, as it was intended, among other things, to show off the orator's rhetorical chops. Among the sub-genres of epideictic are: encomium, ekphrasis, and epitaphios (funeral oratory, closely related to encomium). In a sense, though, nearly all oratory taught and practiced by sophists during the Imperial period was epideictic, "show" oratory; see meletē.
Style (lexis, kharaktēr). In Greek rhetoric, especially from the Roman period, two basic styles of expression could be spoken of:
- "Atticism" was the style that, during the Imperial period, tended to dominate Greek rhetoric. It took as its models classical Athenian prose (5th and 4th cents. BCE), both as to the type of Greek used (Attic Greek) and as to stylistic features. As such, it archaized, i.e., evoked language from centuries past, like modern folks speaking and writing the English of Chaucer (14th cent. CE). In later Greek, Attic stood for linguistic purity, aka hellēnismos ("Hellenism"), as opposed to commonly spoken forms of the language, regarded as "vulgar" or "common" (koinē), or to writing that was somewhere in between common language and high-style Attic, a literary Greek today called koinē (e.g., the Greek Bible, the philosopher Epictetus, the physician Galen).
- What is sometimes termed "Asianism" would seem to have been a style that flourished in various parts of the Greek-speaking Hellenistic world (323-31 BCE), not just in Asia (meaning Asia Minor, Turkey). The term (in Greek, asianos kharaktēr, Strabo 13.1.66; cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus On the Ancient Orators 1), could be used by adherents of Atticism as a put-down. In Greek oratory, not a lot of evidence for it survives, but we surmise that it was marked by short clauses, "wordplay, emotional effect, bombast, and rhythm." That quoted bit comes from the Oxford Classical Dictionary; even there, you see how the term wasn't / isn't simply descriptive; it was / is a put-down ("bombast"). The Asian-versus-Attic-rhetoric debate dates more to the first century BCE than to later; the term soon seems to disappear from Imperial Greek discussions of rhetoric and style. The style, though, does not disappear; it arguably figures in works like Longus' novel, Daphnis and Chloe. See also skhēma.
Canons of rhetoric. In the study of rhetoric, the following skills, or "canons," were believed central:
- Invention- heuresis, the ability to "find" something to say. This has to do with the substance of one's speech: the ideas and arguments one assembles. Here, you're looking for, among other things, topoi, tried and true arguments. Later rhetorical theory and teaching also developed a technique, that of stasis, for generating content, especially when composing judicial or political speeches, anything involving debate or settling a question. (We won't, unfortunately, have time to go into stasis theory, a big topic, but you can learn more on Burton's Silva Rhetoricae site.)
- Arrangement (taxis), the ability to structure it all effectively. Depending on genre, ancient speeches consisted of: introduction (prooimion, prooemion), where one introduces one's subject and oneself to one's audience, and tries to put across a credible and admirable persona; narration (diēgēsis), where one sets forth the facts of the story; division (diairesis), where one outlines what's to come in the next part; proofs (pisteis), where arguments are developed (both to bolster one's case and to attack one's opponent's case); the conclusion (epilogos), where you try to leave your audience with memorable words in their ears. That especially describes a dicanic speech; not all speech types included all those sections.
- Style/language (lexis), skillfully choosing and arranging one's words. Here, a number of figures of speech and thought (Burton Silva Rhetoricae) could come into play.
- Memory (mnēmē), the ability to memorize your speech. (Not an issue in this class.)
- Delivery (hupokrisis), the ability to perform your speech, both as to oral pronunciation and projection and as to physical gesture. (Hupokrisis means the "actorly" element.)
For the canons of rhetoric, more on Burton's Silva Rhetoricae site.
rhetorical question. The asking of a question as if the answer were obvious. If you can't prove it, or if you just need to drive the point home, ask it as a rhetorical question: "Is this how you want people to think of you?" ("No!!") Rhetorical questions often raise the rhetorical temperature by quite a bit.
second sophistic. See "sophistic."
skhēma (plural skhēmata). Usually translated as "figure," as in figure of speech or thought, this has to do with what we're calling "figured rhetoric." Quoting Whitmarsh, "According to ancient rhetorical theory, 'figures' (skhēmata) are rhetorical devices (such as puns, irony, rhetorical questions, similes, or periphrases)" (The Second Sophistic 2005, page 57). The figures Whitmarsh lists there are, which the exception of periphrasis (circumlocution), figures of thought. Figures of speech involve how sentence parts at the level of word groups, individual words, and even sounds within a word could be manipulated to produce striking effects. Heavy use of those effects, the so-called Gorgianic figures, tends to be avoided in "Atticizing" authors like Aristides, but shows up in places like the novel Daphnis and Chloe. Burton's "Silva Rhetorica" has an extensive list of figures (see also also here). See more on the "Encomium and Figured Rhetoric" Study Guide.
Whitmarsh (pages 57-59) explores another meaning of skhēma in writers on Imperial Greek rhetoric: the figure (in this case, the sense of skhēma as "pose") of appearing to argue one thing but really meaning another. Philostratus refers to that as hupothesis eskhēmatismenē, the "figured theme"; call it the rhetoric of bluffing or, as we're doing in class, "figured rhetoric." For instance, "Go Socrates, take your own life if you must, but let me die alongside you!" as the hypothesis of one of Polemon's declamations. (Socrates, intent on suicide, is about to drink the poison. The speaker, Xenophon, to dissuade Socrates, threatens to kill himself, too. That's the hupothesis, the assigned theme; it's the sophist's job to elaborate it rhetorically.) In Lucian's first Phalaris speech, the cruel and sadistic tyrant Phalaris does some tricky arguing to hide his crimes. See further the "Encomium and Figured Rhetoric" Study Guide.
Sociality. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "the state or quality of being sociable; (the enjoyment of) friendly social interaction; sociability." For our purposes, we can understand it cultural conditioned ways of being together and getting along — or, as the case may be, not getting along, which has its own word: "antisociality."
sophia. See "sophist."
sophist (Greek, sophistēs, plural sophistai). In ancient Greece, prior to the later 400s BCE, sophistēs was a "wise man," one who stood out for sophia, wisdom or skill. By about 430, sophistēs had come to refer to a professional (i.e., paid) teacher of subjects of interest to young men intending to enter public life. The term could carry negative connotations; under the Athenian democracy, it came to suggest a teacher of the art of verbal deception.
Those meanings persisted into Imperial times, when sophistēs, "sophist," became a term for a teacher of rhetoric. Indeed, inscriptions coming from numerous parts of the Empire, and dating from the second and third centuries CE, attest to the respect accorded these "sophists." Philostratus uses "sophist" for various teachers / practitioners of rhetoric from his time (early 3rd cent. CE) and earlier, men who, in his view, achieved great distinction in the field. Philostratus also uses the term sophia to mean rhetorical skill; for Philostratus, eloquence was a form of wisdom. Sophists of the first rank included figures like Polemon and Herodes Atticus (1st through 2nd cent. CE), immensely wealthy aristocrats and celebrity orators. As well as holding special privileges and high status, sophists like the aforementioned were major players politically during the period we call the "second sophistic" (1st-3rd cents. CE), performing, among other functions, advocacy for their respective cities when dealing with Imperial government. See also rhētōr, "sophistic."
Sophistic (sophistikē tekhnē, the "art/skill of the sophist"). "Sophistic" is what what a sophist did, whether that's being a professor of rhetoric, a practitioner of rhetoric, or a manipulator of logic. Philostratus refers to the period from about 430 BCE to the early 4th cent. BCE as the "first sophistic." For Philostratus, rhetoric from Aeschines time (ca. 400-320 BCE) up to Philostratus' present (early 3rd cent. CE), a period that saw the emergence of meletē, "declamation" (rhetoric for its own sake, not for use in real-life situations), as the "second sophistic." Today, scholars mostly use the term "second sophistic" for Greek rhetorical and literary culture from the 1st through 3rd cents. CE. See also "sophist."
stibadium. In Greco-Roman social dining, the stibadium, in Greek, stibadion ("mattress"), was a couch shaped like a U or Π, on which diners reclined on their left sides, with their heads facing the central open space, where there would be a table or tables with food and drink. Another word for it is "sigma table," because in the Roman Imperial period, the Greek letter sigma was written like our letter C. At first, they were mostly used for outdoor dining, but starting in the second century CE, they replaced the individual couches on which host and guests had previously reclined. For pictures and further explanation, see the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
syllogism. In Aristotelian logic, a pair of premises that lead to a conclusion. For instance, "Humans are mortal. Socrates is human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." See also enthymeme, epicheireme.
symbouleutic. See "rhetoric."
symposium. In Greek, sumposion, a "drinking together"; the plural is "symposia." It was the often quite ritualized drinking-and-dining party that served as the centerpiece of ancient Greek social life, especially for members of the elite, though non-elites played key roles as serving staff, entertainers, and even as guests. The "classic" Greek symposium of archaic and classical Greece (ca. 800-300 BCE) was a predominantly male affair; ordinarily, women were present only to offer entertainment of various types. (A wedding feast, which women and men attended, would one form of exception to that rule.) This is not the place to discuss details of symposia, but it typically began around sundown, and began with the dining phase, the deipnon. Then came the symposium proper, the drinking phase, during which one was to get pleasantly inebriated, but not disgustingly drunk, though it didn't always work out that way. One drank wine mixed with water; the male guests reclined on couches during the festivities. Later, and under the influence of the Roman convivium or cena, that is, the Roman version of the deipnon-symposium, respectable women started being invited as guests to the Greek versions of these affairs, just as, in the Roman East, they began to come into the foreground as public benefactors (see euergetism). Throughout, the symposium was a stage on which dramas involving class, status, and gender were repeatedly played out, as the Alcock reading ("Power Lunches in the Eastern Roman Empire") reveals.
triclinium, literally, the "three-couch arrangement" that formed the basis for Roman social dining up to about 100 CE; also, a Roman dining room. For the all-important hierarchical aspects and other details, definitely see the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
villa. See the "Sociality, Emotion, agōn" Study Guide.
xustos. Also spelled xystos (xystus), it was a covered running track and could form part of a gumnasion. But the word could also indicate an athletic association, or sunodos.
zēlos. "Emulousness," i.e., the spirit not of envying another's success, but of being inspired by it to still greater achievement. Another term for basically the same idea was mimēsis, "imitation." To envy was shameful and antisocial. To be emulous was admired. See also phthonos.
zero-sum game. The idea of the zero-sum game comes from economics and game theory; it proposes that, in certain games and in certain game-like situations, what losers lose (represented by a negative number) corresponds to what winners win (represented by a positive number). Add those numbers (winnings and losings) together and you get zero. Put more crudely, your loss is my gain. Add a sociological or psychological perspective, and you see that it's not just about numbers; it's about feelings, and not just the elation/disappointment of winning or losing, but the elation/disappointment that comes from a rival's loss or win. In the often status-conscious and competitive Roman Imperial East, the very thought of anyone's winning or losing (the two being closely intertwined) could unleash worry over socially toxic consequences, especially, phthonos ("envy") and baskania (the evil eye). Hence the effort to reconfigure competition (agōn) as a kind of win-win. Go ahead and vie with me, but honor my achievement as inspiration for yours. Feel zēlos ("emulation"), not phthonos.